The vault line.

Shatner, Nimoy Albums Show Ambition

October 26, 1995|By Tom Popson, Tribune Staff Writer.

Taking time out from their "Star Trek" tussles with Klingons and Tribbles, both William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy boldly went into the recording studio during the late 1960s to try their hand at making albums.

Two of the LPs that resulted--Shatner's "The Transformed Man" and Nimoy's "Mr. Spock's Music From Outer Space" (one of several albums Nimoy recorded during the '60s and '70s)--have now been reissued on CD by Varese Vintage.

Originally released in 1968 on Decca Records, "The Transformed Man" became a much-prized vinyl collectible over the years. In recent times, it has gained notice beyond Trekker and record-collector circles as the source of three tracks on Rhino Records' "Golden Throats" compilations, a series of CDs devoted to earnest but ill-advised attempts by celebrities to perform pop songs.

Fans of "Golden Throats" expecting further examples of pummeled pop on "Transformed Man" won't find them, however. Shatner's album consists of five "themed" pairings of readings--the material drawn from Shakespeare, pop songs and elsewhere--and a concluding reading of a single poem, all delivered by Shatner with orchestral accompaniment. The three familiar pop songs ("Mr. Tambourine Man," "Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds," "It Was a Very Good Year") that turned up on "Golden Throats" CDs are the only such entries on "Transformed Man," unless you stretch to also include "How Insensitive," written in part by Antonio Carlos Jobim.

Opening "Transformed Man" is a "once more unto the breach" nod to Shakespeare on "King Henry the Fifth," paired with "Elegy for the Brave," by Frank Devenport--"Elegy" being a musing on a soldier "sleeping" (and presumably dead) on a bucolic valley floor.

Other pairings include "Hamlet" with "It Was a Very Good Year," "Theme From Cyrano" with "Mr. Tambourine Man" and the gloom-freighted poem "Spleen"--given a nice, thick coat of melodrama by Shatner--with an entertainingly overwrought and now-classic recitation of "Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds." (A handy guide reproduced from the original album explains that the latter is a pairing of "utter dejection" and "super elation.")

Closing the album is Shatner's interpretation of Devenport's poem "The Transformed Man," in which a disgruntled city dweller flees to the mountains, becomes immersed in "the eternal now" and touches "the face of God." It is, like the rest of the album, a wonder of fervent and left-handedly engaging emoting.

Nimoy, who has turned up four times on "Golden Throats" CDs, followed a less-contrived route on "Mr. Spock's Music From Outer Space," an 11-track LP originally released in 1967 on Dot Records. (The CD reissue on Varese Vintage adds seven bonus tracks from 1968's "Two Sides of Leonard Nimoy" LP.)

But Nimoy's album certainly has its own moments of camp. Opening with a "groovy" version of the "Star Trek" TV theme--one of five instrumentals here that generally sport a Les Baxter-boards-the-Enterprise feel--"Mr. Spock's Music From Outer Space" finds Nimoy singing (sort of) "Where Is Love," "Lost in the Stars" and "You Are Not Alone."

It also finds him reciting on tracks like "A Visit to a Sad Planet," a log entry (stardate 2434.2) that tells of a "routine patrol flight in the Milky Way galaxy" and an encounter with a ruined, "intensely radioactive" planet where the inhabitants could not live in peace. You probably can guess the planet's name.

The highlight, though, may be the bonus track "Amphibious Assault," a fairly weird, anti-war tale of a cocktail party aboard a landing craft that is temporarily interrupted by the death of the only soldier who storms ashore.

Also in stores:

Elvis Presley, "Command Performances: The Essential '60s Masters II" (RCA)--"G.I. Blues," "Fun in Acapulco" and 60 more songs from Presley movies of the '60s. Not surprisingly, the booklet accompanying this double-CD leaps to the defense of Elvis' much-maligned '60s celluloid output, making the argument that critics have overlooked the role of many of these selections in advancing a film's story or delineating a character.

B.J. Thomas, "More Greatest Hits" (Varese Vintage)--An 18-track compilation of songs (nine of which entered one chart or another) that pop-country singer Thomas recorded between 1973 and 1982 for the Paramount, ABC and MCA labels. Includes "(Hey Won't You Play) Another Somebody Done Somebody Wrong Song."